LIT DU NORD: MINNESOTA BOOKS AND AUTHORS By Nick Healy
Getting in on the Gatsby game S
ince the copyright expired on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most acclaimed and beloved novel last year, things have gotten complicated for “The Great Gatsby” completists. Bookshelves might sag under the weight of new editions after a rush of 2021 releases from various publishers, including five handsomely packaged versions from five imprints owned by Penguin Random House. The new editions come with introductions and commentaries from authors and critics including John Grisham, Min Jin Lee and Wesley Morris, and several feature arresting covers. The appeal of the new covers can make buying decisions especially difficult for fans. As much as readers love the famous blue cover featuring Francis Cugat’s painting “Celestial Eyes,” it can be hard to resist something fresh and beautiful. The new images likely won’t last in the way of Cugat’s painting, which appeared on the 1925 first edition and, after a long absence, returned on a 1979 paperback edition. In the last 40-some years, Scribner sold millions of copies of Gatsby with that familiar cover. But the expiration of the copyright is more than a green light to publishers who want to grab a share of Gatsby sales without the nuisance of paying for rights or royalties. Writers and artists of all stripes are at liberty now to do what they want with Fitzgerald’s story and his characters. Since Jan. 1, 2001, when “The Great Gatsby” officially entered the public domain, numerous versions of the work have surfaced: illustrated editions,
Nick by Michael Farris Smith graphic novels of the story, a Gatsby-related vampire tale (“The Great Gatsby Undead” by Kristen Briggs), and a novel that imagines the life of Nick Carraway before he moved into the cottage next door to the Gatsby mansion. That last idea belonged to Michael Farris Smith, who began writing his novel “Nick” several years before the copyright on Gatsby expired, working under the notion that Fitzgerald’s story was already in the public domain. He was incorrect about that, but his error gave him a marketing advantage. Smith’s novel was ready for release the moment Nick Carraway no longer belonged solely to his original creator. Smith deserves credit for having a good idea and having the nerve (gall?) to pursue it. Nick Carraway is, of course, the narrator of “The Great Gatsby,” and as has been discussed in literature classes far and wide, he is an observer of the
drama involving Jay Gatsby and the careless couple Tom and Daisy Buchanan. He’s a bystander, but he’s an awfully smart and cleareyed one. “Nick” begins with Carraway as a soldier in World War I, fighting in France several years before the time of events depicted in “The Great Gatsby.” He fights in trenches and tunnels, and Smith writes about the war in a gritty style that makes its misery feel full and real. Smith deserves credit for the skill of his war writing, even when it’s hard to read. In Paris on leave, Carraway falls for a woman named Ella, who lives as a squatter in an attic where theater costumes are stored while fighting goes on and theaters are closed. Ella urges him not to return to the front. She says they can go off together and begin a new life. She tells him the nameless dead
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